Laboratory-based research is essential for advancing society but it is also extremely energy and resource intensive. It’s estimated that laboratories are responsible for around 2% of global plastic waste and use 3-10 times more energy per metre squared than a typical office.

This year marks the end of the third, and most successful, year that the John Innes Centre (JIC) and partners have taken part in the Green Impact scheme to improve sustainability across the Norwich Bioscience Institutes (NBI).

Green Impact is an international sustainability scheme where teams of staff and students work through sector-tailored actions and projects, achieving awards as they go. Scientific research is a resource-heavy field making the everyday changes Green Impact encourages even more essential to enable the most sustainable practice.

Our Horticultural Services and ‘Building 26’ (which houses our contracts, computing and finance teams) joined the scheme for the very first time this year alongside NBI students. Earlham Institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory, and Quadram Institute have now taken part in this scheme for two years.

From the inaugural year of Green Impact across NBI, the scheme has gone from 129 sustainability actions from two teams taking part, to 478 actions across eight teams taking part.

Green Impact has facilitated some truly remarkable collaborative sustainability efforts over the past three years and showed that small actions, when done on mass, can have a fantastic wider impact. For example, this year:

• Two teams from the John Innes Centre focused on different aspects of sustainability. The Biodiversity Project team decided to focus their efforts on recording, promoting and supporting biodiversity on site, including recording species at Church Farm in Bawburgh. The second team, based in the Chatt Building, took part in a range of lab, office, and facilities-based actions, and hosted an energy sustainability exhibition, bringing institutes and departments together to share information, tips, and best practice. A traffic light sticker system was also introduced to help lab users switch items off.
• Working on the sustainability of their labs, The Sainsbury Laboratory have been using a pipette tip washer to reduce otherwise single use lab plastics, saving 5L water and 1.8 kg CO2 per tip rack (over the manufacture of new tips).
• Earlham Institute participated in the ‘Freezer Challenge’, replacing inefficient freezer units with eco versions, changing the ultra-low temperature freezers from 80˚C to 70˚C where possible, and clearing out over 700,000 old samples. This challenge alone resulted in a huge 256 kWh per day saving in energy usage.
• Quadram Institute set up a textbook recycling scheme, which led to the reuse of more than 200 textbooks from across all the institutes.

Ethne Clark, Energy and Environment Officer at NBI, said: “I’ve been thrilled to see how much our scheme has grown and how many passionate people have come together to improve sustainability across NBI. The science across our sites aims to improve the environment and people’s health, so it is great to see that we also live and breathe this mission in the day to day running of our site.”

Next year the NBI are taking part in a new scheme, LEAF, which stands for Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework and is led by University College London.

We would love to hear your innovative ways to make science more sustainable, and are also happy to share more information about our projects with other labs looking to become greener – please email Ethne Clark, NBI Energy and Environment Officer: Ethne.Clark@nbi.ac.uk

Award winners

There were many individuals who stood out with their passion and enthusiasm for sustainability this year, and each local winner will also be entered into the national and international Green Impact Awards:

• Kes Maio, PhD student at the John Innes Centre, won the Student Leadership Award

Kes ‘founded the team’ and led the design of sustainability posters for energy and water saving, which were later displayed around site and have had a positive impact in changing daily habits.

• The Community Action Award went to Caroline Smith, community engagement officer, John Innes Centre

Among many projects, Caroline engaged students in the importance of soil health, wildflowers and pollinators by leading outreach at Bawburgh Primary School, and worked with individuals at Church Farm to establish an orchard and ensure habitats are maintained for nature.

• Dr Anne Edwards, research assistant at the John Innes Centre, was awarded the Environmental Improvement Award:

Anne led a pond clearance to improve the habitat of resident toads, established a wormery, led night-time bat detecting and lunchtime nature walks, secured a Roadside Nature Reserve designation, and participated in nature surveys at the Field Station site, as well as helping to gather wildflower meadow seeds for planting next year.

• Two individuals were celebrated with the Sustainability Hero Award: Jim Lipscombe, automation senior research assistant at the Earlham Institute, and Helen Finn, operations and planning supervisor at the John Innes Centre.

Jim led a site-wide energy switch off campaign, which saw a 25% reduction in wastage, and a 50% reduction in computers left on in the lab. Helen has been instrumental in helping to shift the Horticulture department’s culture towards more sustainable practices – resulting in Horticulture being on target to reduce their electricity consumption by 1 million kWh!

The team award winners were as follows:

• JIC Chatt Building: Silver and Project awards ​
• JIC Biodiversity Project: Project award ​
• Building 26: Bronze award
• Facilities and Health, Safety, and Quality Assurance: Gold and Project awards ​
• Earlham Institute: Silver and Project awards ​
• Quadram Institute: Silver award ​
• The Sainsbury Laboratory: Bronze award
• NBI Students: Bronze award